Islamabad, Pakistan ? The al-Qaida terrorist group may be operating in the Kashmir region dividing India and Pakistan, Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld said Wednesday.

Rumsfeld, in talks today with Pakistan’s president, Pervez Musharraf, is sure to discuss Islamabad’s role in finding Osama bin Laden’s fighters, both in the remote tribal regions of Pakistan itself and potentially in Kashmir.

“I have seen indications that there, in fact, are al-Qaida in the areas we’re talking about, near the Line of Control” that separates the Pakistani and Indian sectors of Kashmir, Rumsfeld told a news conference in New Delhi, India, before flying to Pakistan.

“I do not have evidence of precisely how many, or who, or where” they may be, the defense secretary said. He spoke after meeting with Indian Prime Minister Atal Bihari Vajpayee to discuss the Kashmir crisis and the long-term outlook for U.S.-India military ties.

Attacks on India by Muslim militants who want Kashmir to be independent, or part of Pakistan, are a main source of tensions between the two nuclear-armed neighbors.

U.S. officials previously have said they see no hard evidence of al-Qaida in the Himalayan region.

Some of the Pakistani militants in Kashmir do have long-standing ties to al-Qaida, and some trained in bin Laden’s camps in Afghanistan. A few non-Pakistani al-Qaida supporters are believed to have sought refuge in Kashmir.

Rumsfeld on Wednesday credited Pakistan with helping the United States get hold of al-Qaida fighters who left Afghanistan after the collapse of the Taliban regime last fall.

Rumsfeld came to New Delhi and Islamabad to keep up international pressure for an easing of tensions.

He credited India with helping to ease tension since Deputy Secretary of State Richard Armitage visited both capitals last week. The Indian government this week allowed a resumption of Pakistani commercial flights over India, and said it was pulling its warships away from waters near Pakistan.